What was the Cold War? What was NATO? What was the purpose of the Warsaw Pact? Which countries were part of NATO? Who was a...

You have asked a lot of questions in your post. I will answer the first question you asked.

The Cold War was a period of confrontations and competitions between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union wanted to spread the system of communism, and we wanted to prevent it from spreading.

We worked to stop the spread of communism in many places. We developed the European Recovery Program to provide aid to countries that were trying to prevent communism from spreading. For example, we gave aid to Greece and Turkey, and neither country became communist. We helped the people of West Berlin when the Soviet Union established the Berlin Blockade. We developed the Berlin Airlift to fly supplies into West Berlin until the blockade was lifted. We went to the United Nations to help South Korea fight the invasion by North Korea in June 1950. With the United States in the lead, South Korea remained noncommunist.

Another area of competition between the United States and the Soviet Union was to be the first country to accomplish certain things with their space program. The Soviet Union was the first to launch a satellite into space. They also were the first country to get an astronaut in orbit around the earth. The United States was the first country to land an astronaut on the moon.

From the end of World War II until 1991, the United States and the Soviet Union were involved in the Cold War.